1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a system for assisting World Wide Web users in registering at World Wide Web web sites. In particular, the present invention provides storage and access to web site registration information provided by a user of the present invention so that, upon requesting to register at a web site that cooperates with the present invention, the user can request his/her web site registration information stored by the present invention to be transmitted to the cooperating web site.
2. Related Art
The World Wide Web (WWW) is a global communications network having a client-server model as a paradigm for communications. That is, users on client nodes utilizing so called “web browsers” navigate the WWW to access desired server nodes (known as web sites) for at least obtaining information from the server nodes such as hypertext, audio, video, virtual reality, data, etc. For many web sites, it is important to those responsible for the design and maintenance of the web sites that they be capable of accurately measuring both the number and types of users accessing their web sites. In particular, such measurements may be important in determining fees that can be charged by web site developers for building and maintaining a web site. Further, such information may be useful in determining the degree of interest in services and products by web site users. Thus, in order to obtain these web site measurements, such web sites have begun requesting that each user provide information about himself/herself prior to the web site allowing access to web site services. That is, such web sites require a user to “register” at the web site, wherein the user is required to establish a user identification (user ID) and optionally a password with the web site as well as typically provide personal information such as, for example, the city of residence or family size. However, registering at multiple web sites is burdensome for users in that it is: (a) time consuming, and (b) the user is likely to have different user Ids at different web sites, thus requiring a user to maintain a list of user Ids (and optionally passwords) for the web sites to which he/she is registered.
Therefore, it would be advantageous to alleviate many of the above difficulties by automating the registration process at web sites so that users may register at a single web site and use the information provided at this web sited to more easily register at other web sites.